Wood flooring

Hardwood Flooring

If you are buying some hardwood floor, it should be an important decision and significant investment. In order to choose the type of flooring that’s right for you, it’s good to know your needs and preferences in terms of:

Unfinished Solid hardwood

Unfinished solid hardwood is sold in the form of nonvarnished rough strips. These low-cost strips have to be nailed to a wood subfloor. This flooring is generally easy to install, but finishing the surface is more complicated and has to be done on site. You have to pay for finishing on top of the cost of the wood. For quality results, you should hire a highly skilled professional to sand and stain the floor, then to apply three or four coats of polyurethane. This technique is not as common as before due to the inconveniency in finishing the floorings after installation. Therefore contractors nowadays are harder to find for this matter.

Prefinished Solid Hardwood

Prefinished solid hardwood is sold as ready-to-install wood strips that are already sanded, stained, and finished with multiple coats of polyurethane with an aluminum oxide protective finish. The finish is factory-applied in an ideal, controlled environment. A full array of wood species are available in a range of grades, colors, sizes, and shines to blend with any decor. Prefinished solid hardwood is quick and easy to install, and the residents don’t have to leave home during installation.

Prefinished Glue-down Engineered Hardwood

A prefinished engineered hardwood flooring is sold as strips made up of a hardwood surface (called the wear layer) glued on a plywood base. Developed for installation in areas with variable humidity levels, engineered flooring is more stable than solid wood. The strips can be glued directly onto concrete, an acoustic underlay, or even a subfloor with a floor heating system. They can also be stapled or nailed to a plywood subfloor. This is the perfect floor covering for condominiums, basements, and commercial uses.

Prefinished Floating Engineered Hardwood

Similar technology to glue-down engineered hardwood except not fastened to the subfloor, thus the name “floating engineered”.

Grades

Grading is a means of rating strips according to variations in the ronounced natural color variation.wood’s natural color. For example, “select & better” grade woods are more uniform in color than “rustic” or “traditional” grade.

Grades

Select & Better
The most uniform strips with only subtle natural variations in color.
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Exclusive
A mixed selection of strips composed of about 75% Select & Better grade and 25% Traditional grade

Traditional/Country/Rustic
Strips with more distinct natural color variations and small, healthy knots for a more rustic appearance.

Colors

A stained floor gives a unique feel to each room. But be sure to select stains that will match different decors, since your wood floor will outlast any trend in home fashion.

With prefinished hardwood floors, you can choose to install different colored strips to frame a room or accent a particular feature of your decor in a contrasting color.

Gloss

There are following main glosses on the market:

· High gloss: A very bright, smooth finish that tends to highlight scratches or marks of any kind and makes dirt and dust more visible. High gloss finish is a less popular choice than Semi-gloss/Matte finishes especially for high traffice areas.

· Semi-gloss: This medium-bright finish is the standard for prefinished hardwood floors.

· Matte: A matte finish gives wood an low-gloss oiled look with the same performance characteristics, but with the advantages, easy care, and durability of a polyurethane finish. It's a very practical choice for families with children, pets, or high traffic areas in their home, as the low gloss finish will hide many imperfections that can occur over time.

The Janka hardness test measures the force required to embed a .444-inch steel ball to half its diameter in wood. It is one of the best measures of the ability of a wood species to withstand denting and wear. It is also a good indicator of how hard or easy a species is to saw or nail. (source: NWFA)